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Having always known that my pitch perception is not the greatest, I had planned on taking an ear training course once I retired and had time to devote to it with fewer obligations. I signed up for an online ear training course (Rick Beato's), never having had any formal ear training.
Now, my hearing in terms of audiology is OK, some slight high end loss commensurate with being 64. No big deal. So that's not an excuse for the apparent fact that my ears are made of tin. My accuracy in just the first two sets of isolated intervals- major/minor seconds and major/minor thirds- is abysmal. Like "you should probably take up crocheting" abysmal. Yikes! This explains a few things, like why I've never been able to sing harmony. I am proceeding with the hope that the ability to discriminate naked intervals is a skill that can be trained and improved- banking on neural plasticity. The course seems to proceed very logically and I hope will make me a better musician, but the initial steps are highly frustrating...
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04-17-2024 01:14 PM
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I saw Rick's pitch for his course, please let us know how it works out for you.
Learning to sight sing helped me a lot, and for hearing and remembering intervals, a good trick to recall the wider ones is to think of a tune that includes the interval.
Examples:
Minor 7th up, Bernstein's There's a Place for Us (from West Side Story)
There's >> a (e.g., G-F)
Tritone up: Bernstein's Maria (West Side Story)
Major 6th down, Nobody's Knows the Trouble I've Seen
No >> Body (e.g., E-G)
Minor 6th up: Manha de Carnaval (A Day in the Life of a Fool)
A > Day (e.g., G-Eb)
I've forgotten most of these because I no longer need them, e.g., a tune for Major 7th up/down?
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Good luck… This is a valuable endeavor.
I suggest tempering it with an auxiliary activity that is game-like but highly productive. Take a medium-complex melody, for example the national anthem of the USA: start somewhere on your guitar and try to play it by ear. Once you get in down in one key, try it in a few other keys by starting on different notes. Move on to another melody — a holiday tune, a Beatle song, etc
I always succeed best in this game when I hum along with my guitar playing.
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Heh.
Being oblivious about the real quality of their ears is a major mistake for almost every musician at some point.
Congratulations and good luck!
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Major 7th Up is the first two notes of the old "Star Trek" theme song.
Originally Posted by Mick-7
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Nope. Star Trek is a minor (flat) 7. The melody also works as a contrafact for Out of Nowhere. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
The NBC "theme" (not exactly sure what one calls the musical equivalent of a logo) is I VI V
Pent-up House and Breezin' are both the Mixolydian mode.Last edited by John A.; 04-17-2024 at 03:22 PM.
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Not game-like at all (unless you make it one?): scales. Isn't learning intervals the reason why you guys practise scales? Originally Posted by RobSilver7
And, if that's not the result of the training, try it on a fretless?
I've been considering getting a fretless for that exact reason (or maybe convert my resonator to fretless), plus being forced to aim my jumps at the exact location rather than somewhere between 2 frets.
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Yeah, scales and learning tunes by ear. That's all the interval practice I do. Originally Posted by RJVB
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Well, Bali Hai (from South Pacific) goes up an octave and immediately down to the major 7th, so it's close, if you can simply imagine the second note... Originally Posted by Mick-7
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Unfortunately, like many people, the result of my "learning" scales has a tendency be learning finger patterns rather than really hearing the intervals. Originally Posted by RJVB
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"I Love You" by Cole Porter opens with a descending major 7th.
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That Spoonful for minor 3rd.
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But do you really first transcribe a tune into a series of intervals? Even I have realised that I've become capable of playing (simple) tunes by ear, without being conscious what kind of intervals I'm playing. (I played around with KDE Minuet a while back and discovered I was no longer any good at naming intervals either...) Originally Posted by AllanAllen
That's why I suggested going fretless. You still have the patterns, but you'd be obliged to hear the interval before placing it in order to be in tune. Originally Posted by Cunamara
I'm reminded of a fun concert given by the local symphonic of my native city, long ago, where various members performed very different things on very different instruments than they usually played. The concertmaster was known internally for being able to sing the names of the notes of a score at tempo, so he performed a piece that way.
Singing the interval instead of note names would probably be a great form of interval practise.
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I don’t have the mental capacity to label everything I play. Just like I don’t spell every word in my head before speaking. Originally Posted by RJVB
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That's what I guessed (and I wasn't even thinking of analysing everything you play that way, all the time). Seems safe to say that you're matching intervals rather than hearing them.
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The original post... I think it's important that musicians sing, even if it's only in the practice room.
Classic rock bar band musicians usually have really good ears for what they do (and memories). I think it's because they can sing and play hundreds of songs. Also, the songs are usually much more simple melodically and harmonically... they don't have to jump in the deep end and more easily fail.
It's pretty hard to be a beginner, starting with jazz, and expect to do it by ear. Probably better to start with easier music to start developing your ear first.
Practical ear training to me is to learn songs by ear. Formal ear training to me is drudgery.
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Yes, you hear something, you associate it with something you already know from somewhere else, you know how to play it. Originally Posted by RJVB
A simple example, a I chord going to a I7 going to the IV. I don't need to analyze it, I just know how to play it when I hear it. Or, in a blues, that single note cliche triplet alternating on the 5th and the 7th (like the notes E G E, G E G, E G E etc. over an A7 chord). You don't need to think of the name of the intervals, you just know what it is. This is so much easier to pick out than one "naked" interval with no context. And, much more practical.
I suppose it's like a child's language vocabulary, they just know what they know without any theory.
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My 2 cents: I have tried a lot of ear training in different sauces
Ear master pro: good but not great
Complete ear trainer: 5 euro smartphone app that is a game changer. try it.
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Don't recall that tune but Somewhere Over the Rainbow does that too. Originally Posted by Ukena
First two notes of Norah Jones "Don't Know Why" are a major 7th and then a descending Maj.7 chord arpeggio (7-5-3-1).
Ah yes, thank you... then up a major 6th, so a good mnemonic for both intervals. Originally Posted by PMB
Don't know about everyone else, but the wide intervals gave me the most trouble.
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Not really. I still do scales (and patterns based on a given scale), but I never considered it ear training. Dexterity, knowledge, ability all that, but not ear so much. I do a lot of scales in thirds and sixths at the keyboard, to keep my chops up, but on guitar (I'm still working through Garrison Fewell's method of the triads....trying to get it right this time) the scales/modes just arise pretty naturally, so, of course. Originally Posted by RJVB
Ditto transcribing, you know, with pencil and staff paper off records. That's all I've ever done (not necessarily all notated) to learn music, but while it maybe can help as far as learning how to sight-sing, I've not found that to be a great help.
But now I've got hundreds of pages of pencilled-in stuff I took off the record, so that's an entirely different topic. I'm glad I learned those tunes or little moves and stuff, from who knows when, but it never helped me directly with ear. In a direct fashion, you know. I'm sure it helped.
Or just a traditional ear-training approach. I like the Lars Edlund textbooks, but there are certainly other primers out there. Originally Posted by RJVB
I don't really have a beef with the "learning intervals" by associating them with various well known fragments (you know, "Theme from *Jaws*" or "Maria" or whatever), but I find it does get in the way of the actual music one is hearing, writing, or playing...but, maybe that's a good thing in my case!
Playing on different instruments, though....I know you were probably joking a bit about using a fretless fingerboard to get intonation right, but I get something out of every instrument I pick up. It's mostly crap sounding, but I never consider that wasted time.
If sight-singing and all that is kind of boring or textbookish, why not? I'm sure there's somebody's great aunt with a vibraphone or a sousaphone or something looking to get rid of.
But, creature of habit, and my new toy one of the new Yamaha Refaces (the CP), which is competing for attention next to my guitars at my desk at home...but...I also have what one of my nephews refuses to consider a musical instrument, a tuning fork in A=440 at my side at all times. On my desk here, but when I go out to indulge in adult pursuits such as playing pool/billiards at a bar, I like to figure out whatever tunes is being played on the jukebox, so it's always in my pocket when I go out.
It doesn't matter what the absolute "la" is, but I like bragging that I have instrument in my pocket that can play just one note. No, none of my nephews thought that was funny either, but it is true.Last edited by jackalGreen; 04-18-2024 at 03:54 AM.
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I feel you. Mine is terrible. I never even tried to learn tunes by ear until I started taking lessons with Christian and he encouraged me to do it. This last week I was tasked with learning the B part to The Best Thing For You. I've been working with the Chet Baker version. I put it off for days because, even after three years of practice, I still struggle. But it turned out I managed to get it down within 309 minutes. (Admittedly it's not the most complex of melodies.) On top of learning things by ear, I use an app called Functional Ear Trainer that Jens Larsen recommended to me. Rather than teaching you raw intervals, it teaches you to hear each note in its relationship to a chord. I breezed through the diatonic notes, but have been stuck on the accidentals for an embarrassingly long time.
Good luck with the Beato stuff - it seems very in depth.
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Ear training shmear training. Get into the habit of learning music by ear.
In seriousness if you have a bit of dead time, ear training apps are cool. But recognising am interval by ear is less important that being able to play music by ear. In my experience there’s less of a mapping between the two than you might expect, especially on the guitar.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 04-18-2024 at 09:17 AM.
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I also recommend Functional ear trainer. Notes with reference to a key centre more useful than intervallic at least for beginners
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Of course, every different instrument you learn adds something (if you manage not to let it distract you from your main instrument and all that). But no, I wasn't joking about using a fretless to get intonation right. I don't think anyone trained on a fretless instrument would consider that a joke. "Getting intonation right" also wasn't the direct goal here, but a means. Originally Posted by jackalGreen
My violin practise usually started with a warm-up that included scales (as the 2nd step). Just complete simple ones over several octaves, no need even for fancy intervals, the goal being to re-confirm the mental note representation to fingerboard to muscle activation mapping.
Hmmm, so what about those (rock, blues, presumably jazz too) guitarists who seem to be able to recognise even complex chords from hearing them? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I don’t think you should label anything you play in the midst of an improvisation. It has to be sounds (not concepts) all the way during performance (as opposed to when practising). I once asked Jim Hall about this: “Do you think about chords, scales, etc in the midst of playing a tune?” He said “No.” and explained that you can’t be using your ears and applying concepts such as intervals/scales at the same time. Just play by ear… Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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